Healthcare Vs Healing

by: adriennemaree

Tue Mar 01, 2011 at 15:16:09 PM PST

last week i hurt my knee while i was in ny. i've had issues with my knees in the past - thickness impacts if you know what i mean. i'm working on it.

anyway, while helping our hostess, the elegant super fabulous dj rimarkable, with some groceries for a gig she was catering (she's the pam the funkstress of the east), i slipped on a patch of ice. i thought i was fine, but within a few hours my leg was swollen, hurting, my back felt lopsided and like it might have a knife in it, and i could hardly walk.

a breakdancer friend hooked me up with her doctor, but he was busy that day, so sent me to an orthopedic immediate care unit. and the immediate care unit did everything but touch my knee and actually figure out what was wrong with it. i told them all i knew, that it felt twisted or sprained - not broken. i told them i just needed some pain relief, some guidelines on how to not make it worse. they gave me an ultrasound, an x-ray, and some percoset (with a brief reference to constipation and drowsiness, bad combo...).

it amazed me to sit with health professionals who clearly cared and wanted to help, but didn't even examine my injury over the 5 hours i was with them.

the next night i went to see dj rimarkable spin and chairdanced all night. at the end of the night a woman who had actually held it down on the dance floor asked what was up, and i explained about my knee. she said - i am an acupuncturist, and i can do something about that.

the next day i met her at the brooklyn acupuncture project and she physically examined my knee, tracing all the rivers of pain flowing up and down my leg and back. and then she pinned me from head to toe.

after about 15 minutes, i felt a release in my back that led me to giggle. after another half hour, as i was drifting in that magical sleep that comes with acupuncture, i felt a massive boom through my whole body which rachel the acupuncturist told me was a chi boom, and a good thing. after she pulled out the needles, she rubbed an analgesic oil on my knee and said it was better than ice, which can put a chill into the joint that keeps it from healing. an hour after i walked in feeling broken, i walked out feeling aligned and healed, barely limping.

when i got home i went to the detroit community acupuncture clinic and got another treatment with nora, who also hooked me up with some kind of magical tiger balm patches to keep on my joints.

i just facilitated the whole weekend and could actively feel my body attending to itself, healing faster than i ever have from a knee (or ankle, or back) injury.

it felt like the exclamation mark on a train of thought i've been having - i want to always choose the traditional healing methods, the methods that rely on touch and turning the body's healing properties on itself.

and i have to remember that, even in emergencies, when it feels like the ER is the best move. i don't need health systems that start off asking about my insurance and give me the most expensive tests they have without leaving me in better condition.

i need healing.

best website ever. unicorns and rainbows.

by: los anjalis

Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 13:03:25 PM PDT

Say no more: http://didtheypasshealthcarereform.com/

Sure it's perhaps a bit too elated, but the website energy and design (and the fact that it went live almost immediately after the health insurance reform bill was signed by President Obama) get a big YAY.

Plus, here at Cure This, we like unicorns.

"Something I've heard about Canada..."

by: los anjalis

Sun Mar 07, 2010 at 10:00:00 AM PST

"Something I've heard about Canada (correct me if i'm wrong) is that u have a Canadian style healthcare system."

This was Stephen Colbert speaking to Member of Parliament (MP) of Vancouver South, Ujjal Dosanjh.  Hee-haw larious.  The rest of the interview can be found here (of note, the interview sounds pretty hostile but it's true to Colbert's satirical approach.

Not knowing anything about this liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh, I explored his website, where he defends his interview with Colbert, as satire to reflect on.  But that's also where I found out that Dosanjh was previous the federal Minister of Health for two years.  He's a well-informed, outspoken advocate of the Canadian healthcare system, and recently was interviewed by NPR about it. He speaks from a human rights framework.  I'll share the interview below because it's interesting...

a bizarre process & a historic vote: healthcare reform

by: los anjalis

Mon Dec 21, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM PST

So what exactly happened?  Well, the US Senate voted 60-40 NOT in favor of PASSING the bill -- but in favor of ending debate and stopping further filibustering on a specific set of amendments put forth by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.  Yes, they voted for "cloture" -- to end debate on the bill.  Were the debate to continue, Republicans (or Sen Lieberman or Nelson) would have more and more chances at filibustering the bill (a process by which they are allowed to read every page of the phone book aloud or do other things a 2nd grader wouldn't even do, in order to stall the process of moving a bill forward)...  

public option ping pong. lieberman intercepts.

by: los anjalis

Wed Oct 28, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM PDT

As always, a pleasure to see both of these brilliant women talk this out.  And yes...

How to explain the public option for healthcare reform, reprise

by: los anjalis

Mon Sep 14, 2009 at 10:00:00 AM PDT

Share this with friends and family, if folks still have questions about the public option.

Two weeks ago we posted a piece here at Cure This -- How to Explain the Public Option for Healthcare reform. Really -- featuring Chris Hayes, DC editor at The Nation magazine, discussing the public option.  That post was the top search result on Google for "public option explanation" for quite a few days.  Clearly, Americans are looking for ways to better comprehend the proposed public option and other pieces of the larger healthcare reform discussion.  The number of hits on that search declined in the two to three days after President Obama's speech on healthcare reform last week.  Perhaps his description of the public option, among other pieces of his proposal, answered many Americans' questions.

On President Obama's historic address and healthcare reform

by: los anjalis

Mon Sep 14, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM PDT

A television station crew was present at Senator Feldman's house, to capture our thoughts after the speech.  There was a resounding sense of support for Obama's speech and for his healthcare proposals (including unanimous support for the public option piece).

Now, the speech was nothing less than historic on several levels...  

The next rip-off of the American so called "insured"

by: pattyc

Mon Feb 16, 2009 at 11:30:53 AM PST

A few days later I received a telephone call from my doctor's office advising me that my insurer had contacted them, telling them to call me to schedule an appointment to have my cholesterol tested.  I told my doctor's receptionist that unless the insurance company could guarantee that I wouldn't receive any bills after the testing, I'd be dead or dying before setting foot in their office again.  She then asked me if I was taking any meds.  No, I don't. (I haven't trusted big pharma since they started advertising directly to the people.  I'm a monitor your diet, eat organically and, if I need help, go the herbal route kind of gal.)

Not liking the feel of this at all, I decided to complain directly to the insurance company.  For some reason I was directed to the 24 hour nurse hotline.  She said she could take my complaint and during the process divulged a little info of her own.  This particular nurse received a letter from the insurance company (same as mine) declaring that she was in "non-compliance" because she has not been ordering her heart medicine through them.  Why should she?  She's found them cheaper somewhere else.  "Non-compliance?"  Is your skin crawling?  Does it sound like the vampires are tapping at the window?

Gaza, through the lens of human rights and healthcare violations

by: los anjalis

Sat Jan 17, 2009 at 16:49:39 PM PST

This is the 2nd of several posts about the direct healthcare and human rights consequences of the conflict.  Videos and interviews with doctors and medical staff in the region will be shared in the upcoming posts, as well as information on legal/illegal uses of chemical and other weapons.  The point is to document and to discuss.  I implore users to discuss this constructively, without personal attacks.

On January 5th, just a few days into the conflict (it continues still today), a Norwegian doctor who arrived in Palestine on New Years Eve discusses his experiences in the hospital he's volunteering in:

"it's like hell here now, and there's been bombing all night, close to 500 people have been killed, and the number of casualties... of which 50 percent are women and children.
"We have been doing surgery around the clock. i just talked to one of my colleagues in the ICU who has not been sleeping for 3 days.  the hospital is overcrowded, we have 6-7 operating rooms and there are injuries you just don't want to see in this world. children coming in with open abdomens and legs cut off. and the only crime they have done is being civilians, palestinians, living in gaza."

"to be honest we came on new years eve in the morning. i've seen one military person.  there are hundreds of civilians that we have seen and treated.

this is an all out war against the civilian palestinian population in gaza... you have to remember that the average age fo the gaza inhabitants is 17 years, it's a very young population, and 80 percent are living below the poverty level set by the UN.

they are able to escape absolutely nowhere. they cannot flee like other populations can in wartime because they are locked in, in a cage. so they are bombing one and a half million people in a cage. you cannot separate between the military and civilian population."

On Sweden's move to a two-tiered health care system

by: los anjalis

Fri Dec 12, 2008 at 20:07:29 PM PST

AMY GOODMAN: I've been very interested in the social welfare system here, as the United States deals with greater unemployment, the crisis of healthcare. You have a social welfare system where healthcare is free in Sweden. And yet, you're seeing increasingly private hospitals and private insurance?

BRIAN PALMER: Yeah, many small changes to, in some way, make it harder for the general welfare state to function-for example, creating-allowing the creation of a private children's hospital in Stockholm only for paying customers and people with-

AMY GOODMAN: "Paying," as opposed to "pain," customers?

BRIAN PALMER: "Paying," yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Paying customers in pain.

BRIAN PALMER: Indeed, who will pay the full cost of their children's care, or people who have private insurance to do that. What this will do is start to create this kind of thing, will start to create groups of middle-class people who no longer have such a stake in the general welfare system, because they feel, well, I'm buying it anyway privately, and that will gradually erode middle-class support for the general welfare system that up to now has had very high levels of support from the middle class.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about the health insurance companies that are coming in?

BRIAN PALMER: They are very, very eager for this business. And it's a tremendous irony that, just at a moment when Americans, some of them discussing Michael Moore's film Sicko, see the very unethical behavior of different kinds of health insurance and health management companies, many of those same companies are getting the opportunity to buy pieces of Swedish healthcare clinics, parts of hospitals-according to a new law, even entire university hospitals can be sold out to private companies-so that as Americans have mostly become skeptical of these companies, they're being invited to Sweden to do damage here.

First of all, a great summary of the argument against a two-tiered health care financing system (a public system and a private system).

Second, right after Amy Goodman made the whole "paying as in opposed to pain customers?" remark, she actually laughed!  It's nice to hear her laugh, she's so strictly professional that she doesn't show much emotion.